Some surgery to treat cancer can actually make it spread. But traps to mop up tumour cells as they infiltrate the body can boost chances of survival
IT IS the medical symptom that many of us fear the most: a lump. If it turns out to be cancer, we face, at best, a painful and debilitating course of treatment, and at worst, well... the worst.
And yet, paradoxically, this lump is not what kills most people. As long as it is somewhere accessible, a single, discrete tumour can usually be cut out.
It is only once cells escape from this primary tumour and settle elsewhere in the body – like the brain, liver, lungs or bones – that cancer typically becomes deadly. At this stage, there may be so many secondary tumours that repeated surgery becomes a ...
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